Ashes
by CarmineAbattoir
Summary: The team is separated in a desert battle zone and it's up to Vert to find them before the Vandals do. To bad Stanford and Spinner have already been kidnapped and the rest of the team has no way to contact them. Rated for foul language and extreme violence
1. Compassion

A human figure clad in red stood solemnly amidst the bellowing sandy winds of the treacherously dry desert battle zone.

Not five yards away stood a second figure facing the first, this one much more openly muscled and covered with striped fur and slathered in random bits of armor that suggested the vandal had snatched it off of an ancient, incomplete corpse from ages ago.

That, or it was custom.

"Attack, subspecies!" The cat bellowed, most of it's voice carried off by the sharp winds that lashed at the both of them, however, the message reached Vert's ears and he scowled.

"What are we even doing here!" He yelled back, voice dripping with hatred and mixed versions of apathy.

"Why would you ask such a question!"

"Because it needs asking!" Vert then did something that Kalus would have never, in his entire life of fighting humans, would have expected. The blond sighed dejectedly, then spun in a neat little semi-circle on his heel, and _sat. _He plopped down, back facing the ravenous beast which craved his blood.

Kalus immediately saw this as a sigh of surrender and smiled deviously, but then his intelligent mind pushed the animal one aside and identified the red leaders actions as a trap. He grew quietly cautious.

"What's the matter?" Vert yelled over his shoulder wearily. "I don't think you've ever been this quiet!"

"Don't mock me!"

The blond jumped, in spite of himself. Between the loud winds and the sand in his eyes, he senses had been dulled considerably, he hadn't even heard Kalus sneak up on him. He could practically smell the leopards breath. "Why do you surrender, human?"

Vert hesitated, his body filled with a cold, desperate sort of feeling as he searched for his answer. "I'm not. I just don't want to fight anymore. Everyone is dead. My guys, you're guys, all that's left is the two of us with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Quite frankly, I don't really care anymore."

It was Kalus's turn to hesitate.

"You humans are so weak in the mind and sprit!" he finally yelled. The cat lifted the feeble human body off the ground by the neck with one furry paw.

"Are we really?" Vert made no move to look at his capture, but cast his eyes to the sandy ground with little interest. "How are we so different….?"

"We are nothing alike!"

"Yes we are!" Vert felt fresh, hot anger replace the muddled despair. "We're both mammals, you and me! We both speak, lead, and lose! How are we different! Tell me, you big stupid pussy!"

Kalus dropped him to the ground, where the Battle Force leader promptly resumed his position, legs crossed, arm's folded, and stubbornly turned his back to Kalus again. Kalus hadn't the slightest clue he'd just been insulted. Usually, when someone took a good crack at the vandal's dignity, one of the other subspecies, (more often than not the kicking yellow one) would yell out as loud as possible "BURRNNN!"

After their first few encounters, the vandals had learned the this was a sign of insult, this 'bern' signaled that a successful tongue lashing had been served, but at this point, no one said anything about 'berns' henceforth, Kalus didn't know better, and reacted in a way Vert hadn't expected.

The cat sat in front of him, mimicking the Indian-style pose he had taken up.

"Piss off." Vert snarled.

"You're redundant human curses do not affect me."

"All the same. ."

"No."

Vert was ready to rip his antagonists lowed jaw clean off the rest of his feline skull, but stopped himself and though.

He had convinced himself that everyone he knew and had come to love had perished, but didn't think that maybe, during that heart wrenching five minutes of dead air after which he had requested a response, that they could have been unconscious, or even unable to respond via broken transmitter or being pinned down.

Sure, he had seen the Tangler shut down in the middle of battle, trapping Agoura inside , Zoom pinned under his own cycle, and heard the Cortez brothers scream as the Buster was capsized…

However the team had experienced many incidents of total radio silence many a time in the past, and they had never given up on him before, even when he spent an entire day on the vandal home world, they still showed up to rescue him. It would be ludicrous to give up on them now.

He jumped to his feet, startling Kalus, the depressed Vert now replaced by a sudden energetic one. A Vert with a purpose. The latter made a mad dash for the Saber, only one thought on his mind;

"_Maybe they survived!"_


	2. Rotation

Arg... suspenseful chapter is suspenseful...

* * *

Vert moved fast, quicker than he'd ever gone before. The though that his family might still be breathing spurring adrenalin through him, it felt as if his blood had been replaced with battery acid. His arms and legs pumped up and down, carrying him to the side of the Saber, he could hardly slow down fast enough to avoid becoming a splatter on the bubbled window. Behind him, Kalus followed as quickly as he could run, The feline skidded to a stop before his own overturned vehicle and panted. Vert, not in the slightest winded by the flat sprint went to work immediately, fingers flying under the dash and reconnecting wires.

"What…are you even….doing…subspecies?" Kalus caught his second wind and stood up strait.

"I know it's hard for you, fuzz face, but would you mind shutting up for five minutes of you're life? Thanks." Vert didn't miss a beat. He couldn't afford to. Sherman had only explained the procedure to him once. The procedure to establish a radar connection with the other Battle Force vehicles via the engines. Had the Reverb been present, this wouldn't have been necessary, but on the other hand, if the Reverb, if Stanford had survived, who's to say the other's didn't either?

The battle force leader paused, then, catching the train of thought once again, continued. He paused again, this time, it took longer to remember the step that came next. Eventually, the pause became permanent. He couldn't remember how to connect them all. He slumped next to the Saber's tier and became distant, trying to remember with haste, but getting stuck frequently. Kalus suddenly, after exactly five minutes, broke his train of thought."You humans are all the same, selfish creatures!"

"How am I being selfish! You're the one being selfish! Your not even trying to find your team!"

"That is because I know they are dead! Look at yourself human! You run about, wasting your energy and making a huge racket to find them! Why? Because your selfish! You don't want to be left alone, so you refuse to let them rest in peace! I accept that my men are gone and move on! You squander in self pity and fear and false hope that they live!"

"Because they do!"

"They do not!"

Vert was about to make a condescending remark when he heard something in the distance. For the first time since he'd entered the battle zone, he could see clearly. The winds had died down and the sand crawled sleepily at his feet. He hadn't even noticed the drastic change in weather. He spun around to see a small dust cloud behind him, in the center of the cloud was the battered and whining Reverb.

"Stanford!" He turned on his heel, ignorant of the thought that the Saber could get him to his teammate quicker than on foot, and made the second fastest mad dash of his life. Kalus sighed and took his time walking in Vert's hurried steps.

The Reverb was doing doughnuts in the desert. Vert paused twenty feet from the rotating purple blur and yelled out. He was rewarded with nothing but the sequel of rubber on sand and the soft hum of the motor. The Reverb didn't break it's rotating pattern. Vert looked beyond the dust cloud into the rock field behind it. Circular tire tracks similar to the burnout stains in the Hub's driveway spiraled their way out of the rocks and to this point. The Reverb had doughnutted it's way into the open to be found!

"Stanford!" Vert yelled louder. Perhaps the heir has his music cranked up to loud again. But, that wasn't likely, the blue sound lines on the interior were motionless, and music couldn't be heard outside the car.

"His body probably fell on the gas pedal." Kalus suggested nonchalantly as he stepped up next to Vert, who jumped again.

"Shut up, you prick." Vert followed the pattern of the Reverb, which moved only a foot closer to where they were standing with each rotation. It was Kalus turn to be surprised. Vert took a few steps backward with the Reverb only fifteen feet away and ran for it. Right before the purple blur ran him over sideways, the blond jumped and landed cleanly on the roof. He dropped through the open skylight and into the passenger seat of the dented sports car and turned to assess the drivers side.

He couldn't believe it.

Kalus had been right.


	3. Nailed

Vert couldn't believe it.

Kalus had been right.

Stanford's inanimate body was locked in place, his right foot pressed down on the gas pedal was stuck due to his entire body being slumped over to that side. His arm had been draped over the steering, leaning it to the left, the reason for the doughnuts.

Vert moved to lift Stanford off the gas pedal before he threw up from the smell in the car and the spinning combined, but hesitated.

He felt something warm and wet on his back and butt.

It was blood.

He looked up at Stanford. A deep carmine gash ran from the his right armpit and twisted down and around to his naval, where it made a sharp turn and ended at his right hip, like the Verizon logo. Blood was everywhere, splattered from the momentum of the circles, it mixed with Stanford's orange hair and altered it into matted, sticky clumps.

….all that blood….

Vert took a deep breath and lifted Stanford back into the seat and took his foot off the pedal then his arm off the steering control. The car came to an abrupt stop and Vert made to return to the Saber and follow the Reverb's tracks to what he presumed was the crash site of his other team mates, but was stopped by a sudden pressure on his hand.

"Vert…? is that you mate…?"

"Stanford!" he turned back around to find his team mate looking at him through weak eyes that had become a dull grayish jade compared to the lively emerald they'd been before.

"Look at my car! It's all covered in goop." The Brit complained, coughing only once at the end of the statement.

"Shut up, Stanford." Vert wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. "How in the world are you alive!"

"Blind luck?" even in this crippling condition, he didn't miss a beat. The blond exhaled deeply and with sudden energy, moved to a crouched possession and crawled out of the shattered skylight and gave a the landscape a quick 360. Kalus had fled off somewhere.

"_hopefully to find his team, as obnoxious as they are, a leader shouldn't leave his men for dead." _

"You mean like you did?" He questioned himself out loud, suddenly filled with the muddled ashes of despair and realization again.

No. Stanford was alive, so the rest will be too.

He picked the most dangerous looking shards out of the door frame and moved to drag Stanford out.

"Hang on a second!" The red head grimaced, then braced himself for the motion. " Okay, go." he hissed in pain as Vert dragged him by the hand out of the roof and wrapped his arms just under his shoulder blades and knees and lifted him out bridal style to set him down in the shade of the Reverb.

"Damn, man…." The blond muttered, "what did this?" He examined the length of the injury , as well as some new ones including a dislocated shoulder and broken fingers.

"That wanker Hatch." Stanford looked up at the dusty blue sky. Vert could vaguely remember the horrendous chase that occurred between the Scarib and the Reverb. The former was right on the latter's tail, the equivalent to the Earth highway term "up the ass." Hatch had taken a stab at the Reverb's roof with the scorpion tail at the exact moment Stanford thought he could use a sonic blast to jump clean above the Scarib and land behind it. What really happened was the scorpion tail busted through the skylight and caused Stanford's injury. The Brit had tried to dodge the tip of the tail, but being in a fast moving car, had no option but to shrink as far as possible away from the tail. He'd failed to ovoid cotact, and if the Tangler's grappling cable hadn't hit the Scarib's back tire when it had, then there was no doubt the barb, on it's downward decent, would have evidentially castrated the heir. Instead, the grappling claw forced Hatch to swerve and the barb dragged off it's original course and made a sharp left until eventually it snaked out of the roof altogether.

Sharp coughing from Stanford shook Vert from his review. Said music mixer was sputtering crimson saliva at the dry ground.

"Do you have a first aid kit in the Reverb?" he questioned

"Doubtful, unless someone snuck one in when I wasn't paying attention."

"So…defiantly possible."

"Ha ha, Vert, you're a regular Peter Cook."

"I know, stay here Stanford, Imma go see if I don't have one."

"Don't stop doing nothing at all. Check."

Vert Chuckled and started off at a moderate jog back towards the Saber. His recent sprints had worn him out and it felt as if he might have pulled something in his right thy. Either way, there was a tight pulling sensation in the back of his legs that promised he'd be sore in the morning.

He reached his ride and sped back to the purple square in the distance, as he gained speed and the violet dot got bigger, he felt something was wrong, terribly, horribly wrong, so he speed up until the meter exceeded 50, any faster and he'd have to double back after the momentum carried him past the Reverb. He pulled up next to Stanford's car the ran around it multiple times before he began yelling in disbelief. The car was there, but Stanford was gone.

* * *

As Vert jogged off into the distance, out of Stanford's line of vision, he turned his head to the side, letting the cool shade of the Reverb absorb him as he listened to it go into cool down, the various clicks that sounded as if the came from under water began to lull him to sleep. His overly active right side of his brain was forming the clicks into an uneven back beat that distracted him from the flaring pain in his side and the terror of being unable to move his right arm. The suit he wore assisted in regulating his body heat, bringing it down when it exceeded 98 degrees and not letting it drop below 90. But the barb on the Scaribs tail had cut into the suit, throwing it off the margin, if only a little bit.

Stanford bit his lip hard to keep from passing out..

"Wake up old chap, can't afford a nap now, might not wake up. Then where would we be?" He distracted himself by running his good hand over the gash in his side gently, but wincing all the same. The bleeding had stopped for now, but if he moved so much as an inch in one direction, he could feel the thin layer of coagulated blood pulling from his skin. "Thank god I'm not a heavy drinker …I'd have bleed out ages ago…"

"It can still happen subspecies." A deep, rumbling voice made Stanford's blood run cold. He turned his head slowly to meet eyes with the Vandal commander, who stood above him menacingly.

"Ello gov'nah. How's the weather in that think, fuzzy coat on this pleasantly smoldering day?"

"You sweat and shake yourself, filthy human." Kalus growled.

"Fair point, however-!" Stanford was stopped abruptly by a large, fuzzy padded foot on his throat.

"There is no 'however' subspecies, I have been waiting a year and a day to squeeze the life out of one of your pathetic race." he pressed down on the Brit's jugular, causing him to make a sort of pathetic yelping noise, one that required little to no oxygen or energy to emit, seeing as Stanford was running out of both rather quickly. He started to black out, at first resisting the haze, the welcoming it gratefully when a deeper, more threatening situation made itself known. His wound was starting to open, he could feel it opening and closing as Kalus picked up his body and put it down in what he presumed was the Fangore. It gaped, then closed over and over again like a fish taking in gulps of air. The desert sand that had picked up again stung in it and burned.

So much so that Stanford was reminded of a time when he was a kid.

Simon had somehow managed to capture one of the wild squirrels that lived on the grounds of their mansion home. Stanford remembered it well because of the weather, oddly enough, it was early spring,. the air was cold but the ground was a wet mess of random mud puddles and newly softened earth . Simon had nailed the little fuzz ball to the ground. The squirrel has practically tied itself in knots tugging at it's own limbs to be free.

_"What's a matter you big baby? Its just a dumb rat."_ Simon mocked, tugging playfully at its tail, and then his younger brother's messy orange hair.

_"Cut it out!"_ He remembered moving to free the rodent, but it bit his finger and wouldn't let go. He tried pulling, but the animal only bit down harder. Eventually, Simon pinched it's small neck and set Stanford free, mortified, but free. He remembered crying, as most children would in such situations, at the drops of blood that dripped from the numerous teeth marks dyed his entire finger red. Afterwards, Simon had led him to the kitchen to 'fix' the cut, neither of them wanted anyone to know, simply because it was improper for the boys of the Rhode family to be torturing wild animals. What would the neighbors think?

_"Put this on it."_ Simon held up a salt shaker, without giving his brother a second to respond, he unscrewed the lid and dumped it on the wounds._ "All better."_

It wasn't. The salt burned in the cut and Stanford had yelled out loud enough for the entire house to hear. In the end, everyone had found out, and both boys were grounded for two weeks to their rooms. But all Stanford could remember was the salt in the cuts, and the trapped animal, waiting for death.

That was how he felt now. Only infinitely worse.

* * *

I totally fooled you all didn't I? ya'll though he was dead, right? No? oh...well then...

I could't ever kill Stanford, he has an accent. 8I

And sorry for giving Simon an antagonistic cameo, it seemed to fit at the time...

on the bright side, this chap is double the others, so...there's that.


	4. Dive

Sage took a deep breath and reentered the software of the hub. Nearly five hours ago, she had lost the signal with the Battle Force and was searching desperately for a solution by driving her subconscious into the computers of their base over and over again. So far she'd come up with nothing, and was becoming weary of her attempts. Most of her mind was focused on the COM link, being sure to keep it on at all times in order to catch a signal, any signal at all, from the team while simultaneously sending out a coded message every eleven point four seconds in case the COM had only become one way. The rest of her was focused on diving in and out of the hub.

Five minutes later her mind pulled out of the computers and back into her own body. She was perpetually exhausted, she had spread her mind too thin searching throughout the Hub. Sage sat down cross legged in her meditative stance, prepping for another dive when the control room door swung open and in walked, or dragged rather, none other than the Russian member of the team.

"Are you doing well in your search to fix the communicator?" Tezz asked nonchalantly as he dragged a large, colorful sheet of metal over to the Splitwire where he proceeded to tinker with it.

"It is fruitless so far." She muttered in despair. He stood up from his work and looked at her for the first time since entering the room.

"Well, it is a new system, no?"

"It is." She muttered.

The fact was, the COM link had worked perfectly in every mission so far since the first time she and Sherman had presented the prototype to the team, and it had worked perfectly fine on this mission up until about five hours ago.

"And sometimes, an experiment doesn't turn out right the first time, or the second time, or the third. Sometimes, it takes a hundred tries. Take it from a scientist. There were over 10,000 different versions of the light bulb before they found the right one."

"But there isn't _time _for 10,000 _anything _right now!"

"I know this, Sage, but I am just saying that this COM isn't an absolute essential to every mission we shouldn't fall to relying on now."

"I know, But the line went dead in the middle of a battle! They could be dead for all we know, I'd rather go back to guessing than put up with this stress."

"I hear you loud and clear, Sage." He gave her a sympathetic glance. " But more often than not, failure is heart of success."

She paused and stared at the Russian for almost a full ten seconds, looking him up and down for a glitch, a flaw in his mask, but he presented none and returned to his tinkering.

She nodded to his back, suddenly filled with a new hope. Tezz was right, she had always trusted the team to succeed, since day one, she'd put her faith in them to do what needed to be done and get back safe. There was no reason to start doubting them now. She smiled, her refreshed determination forced energy to run through her again and she dove back in after the solution.

The haze was starting to lift slowly. Stanford begged for it to come back, lest the unbearable pain replaced it, but it refused to return to him. As it left, he became aware of a sort of tingling in his right leg, he still couldn't feel his arm, but nothing had been wrong with his lower half when Kalus had abducted him, had there? No.

As the last of the haze evaporated the tingling evolved into a full blown rash of agony. He started screaming, though it did nothing but rob him of vital moisture. He gulped in air for a second round of noise but a scaly hand covered his mouth before he could exhale. It was Krocomodo.

"Shut up, subspecies! Or I'll break your other leg!" the vandal sneered.

Stanford couldn't contain himself. He bit down on the tough skin of Krocomodo's hand, as hard as he could, until he tasted the putrid vandal blood. Said vandal pulled his hand back and yowled, cradling his bleeding hand. Stanford resumed screaming. The simple motion of breathing forced daggers through his shattered leg, it screamed with him, but he couldn't stop.

Suddenly, there was a vandal sized spear planted in the ground next to his head and a hand, this time a fuzzy one with sharper claws, clenched around his neck. The scream in his throat died down to a choked moan and disappeared altogether.

"What's wrong, human? Cat got your tongue?" Kalus sneered and increased the pressure on Stanford's neck. The latter lifted his good right arm and let it tremble uselessly on the vandals huge paw, as if to stop it. He could now only make a small choking noise and tears of pain and despair began to form at the corners of his eyes.

Stanford made a face and Kalus threw the Brit's head to the ground where the former threw up the contents of his stomach on the sandy earth beneath him. For the first time he noticed they were in a large rocky cave of some sort, the likes of which were damp and dim. The smell of vandal had filled the cave and churned his stomach.

"Honestly, human." The vandal sneered. "You by far smell the worst of your team, how can you not stomach our smell and live with your own?"

Stanford was to busy gulping in the tainted air to respond. It made his eyes tear up, leg throb, and stomach do little flips, but it was crucial to survival.

"The little wretch bit me!" Krocomodo held up his bloodied hand.

"I hope you get rabies." Stanford managed to choke out. It was a sentence he would have regretted if he hadn't been crippled, as Krocomodo moved in for the kill, Kalus halted him.

"He is no use to us dead."

For a brief moment, Stanford thought he would get off scott-free for the comment, but Kalus whispered something into his subordinates ear and the latter smiled deviously.

"What's going on!" He yelped as the reptile closed in on him. The Brit tensed up at his approach and it took everything he had not to scream out in as the pain in his side and leg stirred up again. Krocomodo grinned through his knife like teeth and sat on Stanford's right side. He dragged one menacing claw next to the length of the now thickly coagulate cut that ran down his torso. Stanford shivered despite the heat and whimpered.

"No… no please….don't do it….please….!" He was growing hysterical, absolutely and totally venerable in every way to these enemies. And no matter his dignified upbringing, when the shit hit the fan, Stanford was _not _above begging.

"Humans are weak things…bony too, hardly any meat on them…alas, we haven't enough food left to survive much longer here….we might have to eat whatever we find lying around…." Without another word, Krocomodo, with one powerful swing of his tail, made the haze return to Stanford who nearly cried in joy as the darkness overtook him.

"Next time he wakes up, Krocomodo, let him scream all he wants. By then, if he has truly become as unlucky as we have become fortunate, then the putrid human disease 'gangrene' will have set in by the time he comes to. From what we know, that will be something to scream about…" Kalus made to leave the cave but stopped and turned.

"What is it?" Krocomodo asked, looking up from his spot still beside the Battle Force gunner.

"You go out and find Sever and Hatch."

"Why me?"

"Because I fear that if I go out and leave you here with the human, then he will not be alive when I come back."

Krocomodo huffed, then grinned sheepishly. "Wise leader." He chuckled and stepped into the blinding sun to find the rest of the Vandal team.

At first, Vert had cursed and yelled. He'd done five full laps around the Reverb before thinking to look under it. No such luck. Next he'd practically torn appear the interior despite him knowing it was useless. Stanford had been abducted, the paw prints in the sand proved it, how ever, that was as far as he got. If he wanted to find Stanford, he'd have to find Agura first. Her experience could probably pick out individual footprints from a trail traveled a thousand times over.

"And with and luck…" He muttered as he connected the Reverb's tow cable to the back of the Saber, "I'll find the rest of my team too…" He began to slowly follow the Reverb's tire tracks, it wasn't nearly as difficult as the tiny footprints Kalus had left.

As he wound deeper ad deeper into the rock field, never letting the trail out of his sight, hope began to well up inside him. He could see other tracks under the Reverb's tracks, they weren't as circular, which implied that whoever had left the tracks had been willful, or at the very least, conscious, when they drove into the field.

Suddenly, he could see a bright glowing in the distance. He had grown so focused on following the trail, that he hadn't even noticed the pitch black night that had set in around him. He had even switched on his high beams as it had grown darker.

As the glowing dot grew brighter and bigger, he realized it was a camp fire, and there was a single figure sitting next to it.

Vert speed up and the figure turned around to identify the noise. The latter, upon recognizing the vehicle, stood up and started to jump in a lopsided manner.

"Vert! Vert! We're over here!"

The Battle Force leader pulled up next to a slightly damaged Chopper and Tangler. A green clad, female form emerged from beyond the fire across from him and stood next to the first.

He had done it.

He'd found them.

Zoom and Agura smiled wearily at their dust covered leader, a collective hope began to pool between the three of them.

Things were starting to come together.

* * *

ahhh...so many POV's to cover. I just wanted everyone to know that Tezz and Sage are _really_ trying to fix things, and that Vert is _really_ trying to find people, and that Stanford is in _really_ deep shit. I think I got that last one across last chapter, but hey, it pays to be thorough, right?

POST SCRIPT: I apologize profusely for any OOC-ness in this chap. Even though it's always there, it feels ridiculously populous in this one...


	5. Poison

the first chunk of this chap is a flashback, then the story resumes in the present. Just so no one is confuzzled...

* * *

Spinner sat under the shade of an ancient outcropping (which seemed pointless now that the sun had vanished) fiddling with the rations Sherman had given him. He recalled their conversation over and over again in his head, until he fell asleep.

_"Big bro! I think there's just enough room for you to sqeeze through that gap in the door!" Sherman was saying._

_"But I can't leave you here, lil bro. Then what kind of sibling would I be?"_

_"No, the point isn't to leave me, the point is to go out there and find the others for help." Sherman caressed his lower ribs, the top ones were bruised, but the floaters felt broken, at the least fractured. "I can't do much moving right away, I think that crash got some of my ribs."_

_Spinner wiped a line of blood out of his eye. The crash had been more forgiving to him, the impact only served up a minor head bashing, which had caused him to black out momentarily before coming to where the two brothers continued to argue about leaving and staying._

_"You can go and find Vert and the Saber! Then he can cut off the top off the Buster, like a giant can opener. Take the emergency pack with you. If you'r searching, then you'll need it to keep up your energy."_

_"I don't know. Sherm..."_

_"It'l be fine, Spinner, I'm not going anywhere."_

_Spinner began to climb out of the wreckage, but turned back one last time. "If...if I don't come back...then you'r screwed, you know that?"_

_"It's not like there's anything else we can do. Besides, i trust you big bro."_

_Spinner smiled. "In that case, try not to fry alive! I'll be back in an hour, with or without help!"_

Spinner never made it back. He had walked for all of twenty minutes before he found himself totally and utterly lost.

* * *

Agura's face broke into a small smile, then a full blown grin.

"Vert!" She practically tackled him to the ground. "Thank god your alive! Where's Stanford? Is the Reverb broken?"

"Hhh…..um….Agura…." Vert muttered, flustered and uncomfortable on his sore leg, but overjoyed all the same.

"Agura!" Zoom interrupted frantically. "The Saber? Remember?"

"Oh my gosh! Vert! We need the Saber! Quick!"

"What! What's going on guys?" Vert shifted his weight onto his better leg as Agura released him, a sudden tension emanated from the three of them .

"It's Sherman!" His two teammates said simultaneously. "He's trapped in the Buster!"

Vert wasted no time at all dashing back to the Saber, muscles be damned, he didn't even bother to unhook the Reverb from the Saber.

"Where?" he yelled in a serious and terrifyingly calm tone.

"Over this way! Only about two minutes East!" Agura retraced her steps quickly-it would have been near impossible from the height of the Tangler in the dark.

The buster was partially buried in the desert sand when they found it, it's blue paint had blended in so well with the dark atmosphere that Vert didn't actually see it until Agura pointed it out to him. Vert pulled the Saber up next to the Buster and jumped out. Along the side was a long, claw like scar in the metal, that suggested the Tangler had had to right the tank.

"Sherman? You there, man?" He shouted, unsure if there would be an answer. He began to doubt that anyone was even in the tank, alive or dead, when suddenly, he heard rapid shuffling around.

"Vert! Is that you?"

"Sure is, Sherman." Vert smiled at the disbelief in his teammates voice. "We're going to get you out! You'll need to lay yourself flat on the floor so the Saber doesn't cut you!"

"Where's Spinner?" Sherman sounder ready to cry.

"Spinner is…." Vert paused and glanced over at Agura. "where is Spinner?" He mouthed.

"I don't know." She whispered. "Sherman was alone when we found the Buster."

"Not good…" Vert muttered. "We don't know, Sherman, but as soon as we get you out of there, we'll start a search for him!"

"…Promise?" Came Sherman's quiet voice.

"Cross my heart and hope for pie. Now lay down flat!"

There was more shuffling before Sherman gave the okay and Vert began the painfully slow process of cutting a small triangle in the roof of the Buster, figuring it might be wise to leave the turret intact.

"Wait for the metal to cool before you jump out." Vert reminded his previously encased handyman. The latter made no move to do so, but simply took big breaths of fresh air.

"I was starting to become claustrophobic in there…is that the Reverb? Did you guys find Stanford?"

"Not quite," Vert started. "But-"

"You _didn't_ find Stanford?"

"No, but right now, we need to focus on Spinner. He could be anywhere right now."

"So could Stanford."

"I know that! But Spinner could actually still be alive!" Vert clamped his hand over his mouth the second he said those words. When Vert had said that 'Spinner might _actually __**sill**__**be alive**_' it implied that while he thought the chances of them finding the hacker alive and well were plausible, but that he had serious doubts that Stanford lived and was by all means dead and gone three hours now.

"You found a body?" Agura kept her voice level, this wouldn't be the first time someone in the Battle Force had jumped to conclusions.

"No….look, lets just get back to Zoom, I think _everyone _has a little explaining to do…."

* * *

_"On an empty can, I'm a stranger in a strange, strange land"_

"Shut up."

_"Gone, gone, just gone without a sounnndddd."_

"Shut. Up."

_"And it's cut cut cuttinnnng me dooooownnnn, like slooowww poissoonnn"_

Sever jumped up from his spot on a small, flat stone where he had been napping previously. His disturber, Stanford, managed to flinch back even with no space to flinch back into.

"Relax, Sever." came the nervous, calculating voice of Hatch from the mouth of the cave they had taken refuge in. "I rather like these human…er…what did you call them, subspecies?"

Krocomodo (much to the reptiles dislike) had managed to find both Hatch and Sever in under an hour. In that time, Kalus had managed to make Stanford's nerve's jump, with threats and a general heir of malicious intent that made the Brit's bowls react in the most unpleasant manner.

"Alternative rock…?" Stanford offered the purple vandal.

"Yes! Indeed! These 'alternative rocks' are quite curious!"

"You're not suppose to make petty conversation with the hostage." Came Krocomodo's annoyed voice from the corner of the cave.

Stanford scoffed, despite the fear of loosing his other leg (which he feared, _would_ in fact kill him) he still felt entitled to provoke his captors. "Do you have to call me a hostage? Can't you come up with a cooler sounding title? Like maybe a sleeper, or a vigilante or something?"

"Silence human!" Krocomodo growled menacingly.

"You be silent, Krocomodo!" Kalus entered the cave. Despite the sun being long gone, his heavy coat was still making him pant. "At the very least, it's not screaming anymore. Hatch, you go scout the area for anyone looking to find him" He gestured nonchalantly in Stanford's direction.

"It? _It!" _Stanford exaggerated_, meaning _to sound sarcastic, but not quite pulling it off as well as Vandal standards apparently went.

Kalus nudged his broken leg over but a half foot with his spear tip. The small motion triggered an unbelievable explosion of pain to shoot through the limb, which had, up until that very moment, found a medium and had remained fairly silent. But now….now, all hell was unleashed.

Stanford began to scream once more. His mind's painless stupor shattered by the intricately carved tip of reality.

* * *

Spinner sat under the shade of an ancient outcropping (which seemed pointless now that the sun had vanished) fiddling with the rations Sherman had given him. He muttered to himself, disappointedly.

"I'm so...so, so sorry Sherm...I can't believe I got lost on the most important quest of my life...for _you'r_ life...what kind of big brother..." He let that sentence drag off into silence.

An animal began to scream in the distance. It sounded like it had a broken leg or something.

He began to drift off to sleep.

* * *

A large, rather feline beast approached the sleeping figure under the outcropping of rocks. It purred, pleased with it's find, but made no other noise, lest it risked detection. Slowly but surely, the catlike figure picked up the smaller, sleeping one, and moved it in the direction of a well hidden cave entrance. A distant howling could be heard in the emanating from the cave. It was the kind of hideout one couldn't find, lest they'd been there before. The kind no one, not even Battle Force 5, would think to look...

* * *

NOTE: when Stanford says 'sleeper' he's referring to the abbreviated term of being a Sleeping Terrorist.

Music = "Slow Poison" by The Bravery.

dear god, is it over! This chap took so long to make up! (mostly because I was drawing Stanford on DA, but that's besides the point) It wasn't the actual physical typing that took so long, but the rearranging the individual POV's...and all those page breaks...!

But man, I love the reviews! Keep em coming guys, they're wonderful :)


	6. Stench

if any one's still reading this, here's part 6 :P

sorry it took so long, writers block and all that...

* * *

Stanford was in the haze again. Here he tried to think of possible solutions to the problem he currently found himself stuck in, however, he had tread lightly into the depths of his mind for he was an inexperienced tactician, and the threat of the pain-numbing haze leaving again worried him. He thought quickly but was unable to come up with any solutions.

He couldn't escape by any means of his own mobility, the vandals had assured him of that when they broke his leg. He couldn't very well contact the team with his suit's communicator powered down and deriving the remaining battery to keep his vitals within a safe margin. The only option he kept coming back too was to wait it out and hope for a rescue team to find him, if they didn't need rescuing themselves…

Stanford's mind found itself slowly fading deeper and deeper into the darkness, he'd only ever experienced such a sensation once before, when he had gotten into a fight after drunkenly provoking a brawler outside a local bar. He'd wound up in the hospital with multiple injuries that had dragged him deep under the haze multiple times to a point of drowning, the point of no return. Death.

That was the sensation now, Stanford could feel himself dying. He tried to find his way back to the top, even being fully conscious would compensate for total demise, however, scrambling only exhausted him more and regardless of his efforts, the heir found himself sinking again. Unable to skim the surface.

* * *

Vert sat stretched out by the campfire, his legs pulled and ached, but he ignored it and told Sherman, Agura, and Zoom about how he had found Stanford, pulled him out of the Reverb, and left him in search of a first aid kit only to find the Brit M.I.A upon his return.

"I think Kalus might have kidnapped him." Vert rubbed the back of his neck as he talked and shook the itchy desert sand out of his blond hair.

"I agree." Sherman muttered from his spot on the other side of the fire. The technician was sprawled out on the ground, nearly motionless in attempt to keep his ribs from flaring up and shifting around to much. "he probably went out after that to find the rest of his team, asses the situation, establish a base of operations, prepare for a preemptive strike…" Sherman could have dragged on with the possible motives of the vandals but Vert asked about their side of the story.

Agoura, having remained awake, miraculously, through the entire thing started first. "After I pulled the Scarab off of the Reverb and spun it into a rock I saw Sever and Krokomodo work together to ram the buster and tip it over and drag it off, then Kalus fire a barrage of spears at Zoom."

"I tipped over" Zoom threw in, "my bike pinned me and I couldn't move."

Agoura resumed, "then something blue shot from the Scarab, I'm not sure what it was, but my guess is Hatch had some sort of tech on him that made his "sorcery" work. My engines were totally down and my doors wouldn't open. I saw the Reverb backfiring, Zoom pinned down and the Buster was nowhere in sight. Then out of the blue, one of the busters shells blasts Sever to kingdom come."

Sherman chuckled. "Me and Spin decided to launch off some fire works. It wasn't easy with the Buster on it's side, but we managed to hit Sever, he spun out of control and crashed into Hatch."

"And then Kalus chased you way off that away" Zoom looked at Vert and hooked his thumb back at the dark landscape around them, "and Stanford finally decided to pitch in and shot Krocomodo out of the mix, then began to doughnut out of here."

"It took two hours before I could bust the doors to the Tangler open and pull the Chopper off of Zoom." Agoura sighed. "Then I went off to find the buster-I knew it was nearby because of the smoke trail in the sky from the shell that hit Sever- but Sherman was the only one there."

The four sat in an awkward silence.

"So….here we are now…" Zoom interjected. "Any idea's on what to do next?"

Vert thought for a long while before he said anything. The other three had begun to fall asleep, but shook themselves awake as their leader began to speak.

"We need to find Spinner, first off." He looked at Sherman, "you said you sent him off to find help because he could fit thought the tear in the Buster, right?"

"Yeah…" Sherman muttered, "but I'm starting to regret it now."

"Don't, with any luck, he'll find Stanford and get his suit's COM link up and running." The other's shifted uncomfortably in the sand, for the last few hours, Stanford's suit had stopped broadcasting a signal and his blip was off the radar. An hour ago, Spinner's location had also dropped off the map. "If any one can rewire these shock suits, it'll be Spin." Vert assured. The others smiled halfheartedly, accepting the reassuring words, but not embracing them. They fell into an awkward silence again and one by one dozed off to sleep. Zoom had taken time to doze while Vert and Agoura were freeing Sherman, so he claimed the first watch and climbed atop the parked Tangler to observe the unforgiving landscape.

* * *

Spinner came too in a damp cave that smelled of Vandal and decay. He heard soft snoring and flinched, terrified a sleeping beast my wake up and have him for lunch he backed away from the sound. After grabbing a fist sized rock and hefting it a few times from hand to hand, he slowly approached the noise only to find that Sever was curled up on a large flat stone, asleep. Three yards to the right, he could make out the reptilian form of Krokomodo, also dozing in a bed of sand still warm from the days sun.

"better to let sleeping vandals lie" he whispered to himself and backed away, but kept the rock in his fist all the same.

Finding a spot he deemed acceptably far away from the sleeping beasts, he surveyed the rest of the cave until his eyes landed on a third figure, smaller than the rest. A human body. His eyes focused in the dark and picked up soft traces of light that flickered over a shock suit. They had a purple tint to them and as Spinner approached the prone figure his eyes widened.

"Stanford!" He nearly yelled, but remembered the sleeping vandals behind him and approached as silently as possible. A closer look revealed the worst, the Brit was pale, cold, and laying in a puddle of vomit and blood. A long laceration ran down his side and curved over his stomach. Blood had soaked through the shock suit and ran down his face and mangled his hair. The plasma and sweat had cut streaks through the dirt and sand on his ghostly unconscious face.

Spinner tried to shake the team's gunner awake gently, but it did no good. Mortified, he pressed two fingers to Stanford's neck, but found no pulse.

He tried again and again, but every time was rewarded with no sign of life.

* * *

cliffy :P

sorry for my sucky writing, it's all over the place

that's why i'm looking for a Beta reader to get stuff straitened out, so bear with me on this :I

thanks for reading :D


	7. Breath

whoops, forgot to post this :P

* * *

"Come on Stanford! Wake up!" Despite all odds, Spinner refused to accept that his friend was dead. The shock suit's glow was enough proof that the Brit hadn't been gone for long; it still glowed softly and had yet to shut down—which was what the suit was programmed to do when its wearers vitals faded. That must mean he'd only been stone cold for a few minutes.

Spinner peeled open one of Stanford's eyes—it was dilated. His skin was cold, but not completely devoid of heat or color. He tried shaking his unconscious teammate awake again to no avail.

"Come on Stanford…" he muttered."Don't make me kiss you, man!"

At a loss of what else to do, he pinched Stanford's nose, pressed their lips together, and forced air down his throat. Then he pumped his heart, trying to get it beating again. He did this alternately for over three minutes before slumping over and moaning defeat, staring at the corpse before him. "Sorry Stan…" he muttered to no one. A long silence ensued.

"….Sorry…for what?"

Spinner jumped in shock. "You're alive!" Stanford had begun to breathe shallowly without him noticing. The Brit smiled grimly up at the cave ceiling.

"Oh come on now, don't underestimate royalty-" Here Stanford started coughing and trying to take in haggard breaths. His leg was mostly numb as was his torso, but trace amounts of pain clung to his wounds like the desert sand that coated them.

"Try to relax…or…I dunno! Don't swallow your tongue!" Spinner was at a loss of what to do; he knew basic CPR, but his medical knowledge took an abrupt stop there and scattered in random directions.

Eventually the coughing subsided and Stanford shifted uncomfortably in the wet sand below him. He looked up at Spinner.

"What the hell are you doing here?" the gunner asked in a scolding manner. It hurt to talk, but it was a relief to see a friendly face.

"What am _I _doing here? What are _you_ doing here?" Spinner retorted.

"Uhm, bleeding to death, obviously."

"Wow, don't sugarcoat it, Stan." Spinner scowled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Formalities aside, you need medical help ASAP. Does your COM link work?"

Stanford wanted to answer, but his throat hurt from all the coughing and screaming he'd been doing lately, so he merely shook his head 'no' and hoped Spinner wouldn't notice his problem.

He didn't.

"Well, mine is a bit off too, I can't get it to broadcast a signal, and the links to the Hub and the rest of the team are down…maybe if I reroute this link…and disconnect that one…and now derive power from the temp regulator on my suit…" Spinner went on mumbling to himself and tinkering with the communicator on his wrist. He was so caught up in his work that he didn't notice the large purple vandal sneaking up behind him. Stanford's eyes widened in panic and he tried to warn Spinner, but could only make a sort of scared moaning noise.

"Hello, human," came Hatch's voice, tinted with glee. Spinner's blood ran cold and he spun around. "What do we have here? Prisoners trying to escape?"

"Uhmmm…er…" Spinner panicked. He couldn't let the vandal know he was attempting to send out a beacon in hopes of a rescue, so he did what any good tactician would do in a situation like this. Lie.

"We weren't trying to escape!" the gamer whispered, trying not to wake any more suspicious-by-nature vandals in the squad. "I was trying to help my teammatehere." Okay, so that part wasn't a lie.

He gestured to Stanford's broken body on the ground. The Brit was genuinely confused, but knew how to play along; he waved casually at Hatch with his good arm and grinned innocently.

"He's dying over here and all you guys do is sleep! Come on! Don't any of you know Hostage Courtesies 101?" Spinner bombarded Hatch with made-up garble,and the vandal was intrigued by the earth version of keeping prisoners—Spinner was intrigued by the words coming out of his own mouth.

"You _have_ to take good care of your hostages! How else do you expect them to live?"

"I didn't know!" Hatch was now frightened that the wounded prisoner would die on his watch, and Kalus would have his exoskeleton for it. "What should I do?"

Spinner smiled to himself; the situation was now under his control, so long as no one else woke up.

"Well, first of all, we need water." Spinner glared at Hatch like an impatient teacher trying to instruct an utterly confused student. "You do have water, don't you?"

"There is a small reservoir in the very back of the cave; it's a bit muddy, but it's running water and little eels swim around in it."

"Good, now we need something to carry it in."

Hatch raised his claw. "I might have something!" He shuffled outside of the cave, grabbed a spare shield from the Fangore, and returned to the cave. "Will this work?"

"Yes, now lead me to the water!" He turned to look at Stanford. "Wait here buddy; I'll be back in a few."

Stanford gave him a look. "Yeah, because I'm totally going to get up and have myself a midnight stroll through the desert."

"Nobody likes a smartass, Stanford." Spinner grinned apologetically. "Seriously though, hang in there." He turned and followed Hatch into the deeper confines of the cave.

* * *

"Have a nice bath, mate?" Stanford grinned at the sight of water; his mouth was bone dry, his throat burned, and he knew he was dehydrated.

"You have no idea." Spinner shook his head like a dog and plopped down next to Stanford. Hatch followed with the water and placed the shield-basin on the ground, then sat a small distance away to observe the transaction.

"I just thought…um…maybe you should know, my shoulder is dislocated," Stanford said as Spinner moved to sit him up.

"Really? That sucks," Spinner muttered. "I guess we'll have to pop it back in or something…"

"What do you mean '_or something'?_"

"I mean, hold still for a second; I've never relocated a shoulder before! But I saw Sherman do it once."

"That's reassuring and all but—ahh damn it!" Stanford winced in pain as Spinner moved him into a sitting position way too fast for the Brit's liking.

"Hatch!" The gamer yelled (but not too loudly). "I could use a hand over here!"

Hatch immediately obliged, and, as instructed by Spinner, held Stanford in a sitting position. The latter tried to focus on simply breathing as his wound began to crack open.

"Here, you should drink first." Spinner held up the makeshift basin to Stanford's lips. It took him a second to catch his breath, but as soon as he did, the gunner drank eagerly. The liquid was a shade of light yellow, it was full of sand and smelled of waste and dead fish.

And it was the most delicious water Stanford had ever tasted.

But as soon as it was there, it was gone."Don't drink it all at once, you'll throw it up. Trust me, it's not fun." Spinner set down the shield and grabbed Stanford's dislocated arm. "Now, the trick to this is that you have to relax. It'll pop in a lot smoother if you do."

"Easier said than done, mate." Stanford's body had involuntarily tensed up after the sudden movement, but he forced himself to relax. His body went limp, andSpinner slowly started rotating the arm just below the dislocation. It took multiple, painful tries, but eventually the shoulder popped back into place. Stanford managed to hold back a scream and settled for a small yelp instead. He tried to move his arm a bit, but it flared up with pain.

"Try not to move it too much." Spinner advised and fell back on his haunches.

"Thanks, Spin." Stanford felt himself become instantly tired. Spinner gave him more water and sighed.

"Don't thank me yet. Hatch, help me drag him over here." Spinner pointed to a patch of dry sand that wasn't soaked in blood and human waste.

"Oh…bugger…" Stanford bit his lip as they dragged him three feet to the left. The two (by Spinner's instruction) were careful to keep the cut from reopening toomuch, but his broken leg screamed out in pain.

He blacked out as they set him down.

* * *

Thank you Zemby for being my beta :)


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